It was said of France’s generals that they were always fighting the previous war.

For my old comrade, John Nichols, it is always the Act 10 occupation of the Wisconsin State Capitol in February-March 2011 or (as the Policy Werkes calls it) the intifada. Bullhorns, posters with Hitler references, Hollywood celebs, illegal teacher walk-out, intimidation, and national media attention. It’s 1968 again only with cable TV coverage!

On the evening of the Walker recall election a year later, Wisconsin voters proved what Democracy really looks like when they stuck a Wayne Larivee-style dagger into the bleeding heart of the Left.

Obama’s team cautioned Wisconsin Dems not to go for recall but Nichols and the Hugo Chavez contingent believed their own hype: that Madison’s mad pity party resonated in Mauston and Marinette.

Cuban communists: heroes?!

The shocking election of the anti-christ last November has bestowed the radical cause with a renewed sense of fear and loathing and that, comrades, is ready tinder for the revolutionaries. New tallow for that sputtering candle of socialism. Put on your pussy hats, grab your black Antifa masks. Game on!

Those are the animal spirits animating the first Fighting Bob Fest of the Trump era. The fulminating begins at 7 p.m. Friday at Madison’s Barrymore Theatre. (The actual BobFest is moving out of the Madison bubble to Milwaukee and La Crosse, two traditionally Democrat(ic) strongholds.)

When the Wisconsin uprising arose in 2011, as hundreds of thousands of citizens raised an outcry against Gov. Scott Walker’s assault on labor rights and the underpinnings of civil society, one of the nation’s ablest social commentators came to the state to observe what he recognized as an essential struggle.

Walker “assaulted the underpinnings of civil society?” Not Segway Jeremy, Thistle, and Hippie Bongstocking? Not the disruption of the Special Olympics award ceremony? Not the flight to Rockford, Illinois of the Democrat(ic) state senate? Not the mob shutdown of the M&I Bank on the Square? Not the threat to gut and field dress the governor’s wife like a deer?

As for that ablest of social commentators, he would be one Thomas Frank, most noted for his 2004 book, What’s the Matter with Kansas?, which posited that citizens who voted Republican were voting against their own economic interests. To a Marxist, everything is economics (not that he got that right either, as this review notes).

… the political dynamics playing out in the Badger State are not so different from those that transformed his native Kansas from a populist hotbed into a reliably Republican state where working-class men and women regularly vote against their own economic interests and enrich people like the Koch brothers.

Thank you for that lab specimen of typical liberal-progressive-socialist arrogance. Those deplorable ingrates! Don’t they know what’s in their own best interests?

If socialism can work in Venezuela …

What Nichols/Frank still don’t understand is that conservatives, libertarians, and tea partiers don’t begrudge the Koch Brothers for the good-paying jobs they created. Nor do Joe and Jane Lunchbucket lust after someone else’s Stoli when a police officer defends himself against attack. Their values transcend the almighty dollar. They value things called self-regard, personal achievement, independence. They didn’t wait for government to enlist the Cajun Navy, for the most recent example of the Great Unwashed in action.

Big on Bernie (and raised fists). Author of the Antifa primer has a motto: “by any means necessary!”

As for the “anti-labor extremism of its governor,” now thrice elected by the voters of Wisconsin — a majority of the 50 states now have right to work laws on the books.

No, if you want extremism, if you want to assault the underpinnings of civil society, try reading The Nation magazine, where John Nichols is national affairs correspondent.

The Nation is hawking a book of political pornography that advocates for Antifa’s black-masked street thuggery. The magazine regularly gives cover to Antifa; most recently, “Why Berkeley’s Battle Against White Supremacy Is Not About Free Speech.” (No speech is free when Progressives disapprove of that speech.)

Like the Left in general, The Nation promotes identitypolitics and white shaming. “On White Identity Politics and American Terrorism,” another broadside claims “We cannot move forward until white citizens claim their history.” That history, of course, being of the nefarious kind. (Note the linkage between “white identity” and “terrorism.”)

Nichols-Frank, the Nation, and BobFest still believe in income redistribution. That’s why they are all agog over Bernie Sanders. Single-payer, a euphemism for socialized medicine (as is “Medicare for all”) is now the official party line.

National Reviewboils it down to this: “Bernie Sanders wants all Americans to enjoy the speedy, compassionate care that our men and women in uniform enjoyed from the Phoenix offices of the Department of Veterans Affairs.”

There’s no way for Democrats to tout their current bold promises about affordable health care without acknowledging their failure to keep their last round of bold promises about affordable health care.

Here in Wisconsin, the party defenestrates its leader for voting for jobs in his Assembly district? The cost? Foregoing the tax revenue that Wisconsin wouldn’t get in the first place if Foxconn doesn’t build here.

One might ask, what’s the matter with the Left? How about (for starters) socialism, identity politics, and arrogance?

“To a Marxist, everything is economics”
It isn’t only limited to what you call Marxists, but to all political stripes when in need of a boost at the polls. To wit: Foxconn, trump’s MAGA whole pitch to blue collar workers, and now the internal spat with the R’s over the state budget. The examples are limitless…..

Considering the left’s obsession with the great wealth of people like the Koch brothers or Donald Trump, or for that matter, anybody who has more money than they do, you would think they would be consumed with how that wealth was achieved. But you’d be wrong. They have no interest in how the wealth was accumulated. Their only interest is in how to confiscate and redistribute it. They will say things like, “in a country this rich, we should be able to have health care for all,” never giving a thought to how that wealth came to be in the first place, or in whose bank account it is currently residing.

Isn’t it time we made the date of Walker’s recall election victory an official state holiday? The one day out of the year when the state’s Democrats–in particular Madison liberals–could pause to reflect on their self-indulgent (and self-destructive) arrogance and the general error of their ways.

The condescending title of Frank’s book is more telling than he realizes about the liberal mindset. Conservatives think liberals are ordinary people who have made the wrong choices; liberals think conservatives have something “the matter” with them–some fundamental flaw in their DNA–that prevents them from seeing the revealed truth of liberalism (you know, the one with science on its side).

Asking for a friend

Mike Huckabee asks: What would a federal judge do if Jim Acosta challenged him in his courtroom, argued and refused to give up the microphone when a bailiff tried to retrieve it?

Unmet needs?

‘Got anything for us?’

MidTown 8:25 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 18 — Officers met with a victim (26-year-old AAM) who reported being approached by two AAMs, one AAF and one WF (possibly all juveniles) as he was waiting for a bus. The victim stated the “juveniles” asked him if he had anything for them. The victim said he referred to them as “kids” which caused the two AAM’s to batter him. The suspects fled. The victim sustained visible injuries, including a chipped tooth.

Someone (could) DID get hurt like this!

11:35 p.m. Nov. 17 — A Fitchburg police officer spotted a Subaru Forrester that was listed as stolen through MPD. The vehicle took off when a stop was initiated. The vehicle ended up crashing into an unoccupied house near Allied Dr, located within the City of Madison. The house sustained heavy damage and the vehicle was totaled. All three occupants were transported to the hospital.

The suspect driver was a 16-year-old AAM, whose injuries were unknown at the time of this entry. A 14-year-old AAF passenger sustained a broken arm. A 14-year-old AAM passenger had a fractured/dislocated hip and will be admitted for surgery. Fitchburg PD took the vehicle for evidence in their investigation and MPD took the crash investigation.

Even MORE school-to-prison at La Follette H.S.

Friday’s Disturbance — 3:44 pm. Nov. 16 — The La Follette High School Educational Resource Officer was outside monitoring students when a suspect (30-year-old AAF) began yelling threats from the street at school staff. The suspect’s daughter (14-year-old AAF) threw a water bottle at a group of students in front of the school and then fled with her mother in a vehicle. Officers performed a traffic stop on the vehicle and while officers attempted to detain the suspects, an additional passenger/suspect (16-year-old AAF) was arrested for interfering. The 30-year-old suspect was conveyed to the Dane County Jail while the teenagers were cited for disorderly conduct and resisting arrest.

Tuesday’s disturbance — 9:55 a.m. Nov. 13 — School Resource Officer (SRO) at La Follette High School asked for additional resources as a disturbance was breaking out in the commons area of the school.